


I'm In Hell And You're The Devil

by Frogmen



Series: No One Is Happy With This [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, and one surprise assassination, author not being very sure about how sparklings work and spitballing it, lots of swearing everyone's had a long day, spoilers for LL24
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 02:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16466966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frogmen/pseuds/Frogmen
Summary: It's the largest hot spot in recorded history and they're horrifically understaffed, everyone's a bit tense considering the company, and most of them were hoping for a break after the whole shebang leading up to this.(expansion and sequel of Outgoing Messages)





	I'm In Hell And You're The Devil

**Author's Note:**

> Look issue 25 got delayed a lot. So now I've made goofy shorts over what Rung went and saddled them with. Also that page of 25 that's going around isn't okay, they're all okay and alive. In this fic anyway. Except for the one who is, as the tags indicate, assassinated, and isn't actually a tagged character because all he does is die.  
> And because wiki info was kinda sparse I'm just going newspark (exposed spark)>protoform (little lump)>sparkling (any stage of basically stubby humanoid)>newframe (full grown)

Nickel levered out another spark and situated it inside the carrying case before saying, “so to be clear, since it seems you missed it the first time, I did say to only bring down the mechs you would let handle sparklings.”

“I did.  I just trust my crew,” Deathsaurus carefully pinched one of the sparks and lowered it into a groove of the case.  After it was safely settled in he released his held breath and opened the three eyes he had closed in concentration, “besides, I left Flying Knife and Jeffries on the world, someone needs to keep things running, and they’re the clumsiest.”

Nickel made a noise of disinterest and clicked her laser scalpel to a higher heat as the substrate shifted to something sturdier under the next cluster.  She replied, “that’s something, I suppose. It’s still just weird how much faith you put in them, though. And stop being so nervous with those, they won’t crumble if you look at them wrong.”

With a huff Deathsaurus dropped the spark he was holding into the case.  “Drop” in the sense that he carefully lowered it in with his hands cupped beneath it and carefully eased it in, cringing at the light “tink”.  But he still did so much faster than he had done so previously. “I’m going as fast as I can, it’s stressful to handle something so small and unprotected.”  He rolled his eyes and added, “And it’s called loyalty, Nickel. Kinship, generally caring about each other and trusting them. You’re no stranger.”

Nickel rolled her eyes right back and huffed, “look, The D.J.D. was family, I gave a damn about them, but I sure as hell didn’t trust them.  They were unpredictably violent and-”

“I wasn’t talking about the-”

“ _Don’t_ interrupt me.”  Nickel waved her scalpel sternly.

Deathsaurus waited a long moment for her to wrap up before raising several eyebrows, “so you were saying?”

She gave the scalpel a final frustrated shake and went back to scooping out the newsparks before saying, “fragging made me forget…  Something about weaving a tapestry of fear to keep them in line.”

“Well _I_ was going to say I wasn’t talking about the D.J.D. in the first place.  When we got here those ‘Scavengers’ were rather defensive of you. Not even mentioning that you told me to leave them alone for kidnapping you right off the bat.”  

Nickel scoffed, “those losers didn’t even mean to take me, they’re practically helpless.  Going after them would be like kicking one of these things.” She gestured to the case of sparks.

Deathsaurus cracked a smile and declared, “meaning you _do_ care about them enough to want them alive and well.  Would you like me to invite them to join the crew?” He glanced down and started, “should the metal on them be moving like that?”

Nickel nodded and gave the newsparks an experimental wiggle like she was testing for broken eggs, “these are mobile incubators, no one’s sure how stable this place is and some patches are already showing signs of deterioration, so we’re not taking any chances with stasis.”  The rest of what Deathsaurus had said hit her and she shook her head emphatically, “and no, absolutely do not invite them. They’re well enough once you build a tolerance, but they’re best in small doses, believe me.”

Deathsaurus chuckled.  Nickel mentally relived the nine hour argument of which character should shack up with which on some trashy soap opera.

After a moment Nickel dropped her scalpel and raised her hand to the side of her head, she replied to whatever was said with a terse, “responding” and turned to Deathsaurus, “there’s an emergency a few miles South, you finish up.”  She stood, stretched, and took to the air..

Deathsaurus saw there were only a couple spots left to fill before it was time to head to a tent.  He could hardly wait, his back could use the break.

* * *

 

There isn’t much in the way of setup for the care centers.  There were a few smaller groups of buildings scattered over the hot spot (the inhabitants of which they had more successfully convinced to give helping out a try than the general population), but it was centered over a barrens, so they were building as they went.  “As they went” including clearing enough of the ground to actually set up the plundered equipment without walking on newsparks. All together that meant the average care center was an open air jumble of medical equipment lit in lime-green and covered with a brightly colored canopy and surrounded by a low fence.

Velocity jogged from one incubator to the next, murmuring under her breath as she did the checks that all the newsparks were developing correctly.  Appropriate temperature, signs of growth, any bubbling, pocks, or other signs of malformation, and confirmation that the energy signature was holding consistent.

She was dying on her feet, it had only been a few hours since they had properly set up, but after everything else she had been hoping for some kind of break.  Instead she was doing her best to pretend that it was residency again (the part of her that remembered what it was like to have time to play videogames dubbed it “Residency+ Nightmare Mode”), but that didn’t do much but make her crave those disgusting energy drinks she had lived on back then.  

The cyber-caffeine pills weren’t doing badly, but she just didn’t feel like she was really getting the full effect if she didn’t actively hate her sense of taste.

She had just finished that round when hoarse yelling drew her attention.  She looked up just in time to see Anode and Lug land roughly at the edge of the “building”.  Anode skidded flat on her back in a jerky half-circle with Lug held to her chest protectively, Lug in turn clutching a carrying case above her, stiff-armed and as un-jostled as circumstances could allow.  They picked themselves up quickly and stumbled inside before Velocity could react.

Lug swung the case into one of the last empty spaces on the fold-out tables and dropped to the ground with her head between her knees in an impromptu rest.  Anode, meanwhile, swayed awkwardly to Velocity with a hand outstretched.

Velocity grabbed the hand in an effort to steady her and questioned, “did you hurt yourself?”

Anode shook her head and pulled her hand free to hold it out again, with a gimme motion, “nah, nah, I’m fine just tired.  I need more of those caffeine pill things is all.”

Even if Velocity hadn’t caught Lug mouthing “no” at her from behind Anode she wasn’t about to.  “Er, no. You had some an hour and a half ago, if I gave you more that could make you really sick..”  She thought for a moment, “you’ve been smithing, right? You’re on the call list. Shaping the newsparks would drain your energy pretty heavily.  Just grab one of the recharge cables and take a few hours.”

“Nah I’m good, I just need a little pick me up!”

Lug frowned and chimed in out loud, “just lie down, if something happens we’ll wake you up.”

With a dramatic sigh Anode raised her hands, touching one to her nose, and seemed about to protest again when she suddenly tipped forwards to be caught by Velocity, who hauled her over to the spare berth and plugged her in.  

She turned to Lug, who was well on her way to crashing in her near-crash position, and said, “the recharge station has a splitter if you want to rest too.  We’re ahead of schedule right now and the first round of faders are taken care of mostly. And having someone here when they start developing into actual protoforms in a bit would be really helpful, since my nurse ran away.”

Lug nodded gratefully and wandered over to the berth, and turned before lying down, “wait who wandered off in all this?”

Velocity looked up from her examination of the most recent additions and shrugged, “he was one of the Enforcers that Ratchet intimidated into helping.  He looked kind of confused when he saw I was the one working and just kind of bolted when I tried to make him actually touch a newspark.”

“Wow.”

Lug settled in, essentially splaying herself across Anode.  After a moment she propped herself up on her elbows, eliciting a grunt from below her, wrinkled her brow in confusion, “wait, we just killed his bosses and he was more scared to handle a youngster than to piss off a prime?”

Velocity paused, “wait, we are primes, aren’t we?  Or well, can there be more than one at a time? I mean…  Well, cultural-religious stuff makes it weird if we are.”

“No clue, but if I’ve got weight to swing around I’m going to take advantage of it while I can.”  Lug flopped back properly to a second (certainly exaggerated) “blergh” and powered down for as long as she could get away with.

* * *

 

There were some things the care packet was very clear and informative about.  Like how you could detect early signs of deformity or cooling, and things like how it was important to interact with protoforms so they got socialized when their brains were soft enough to build the connections naturally.  Rodimus was pretty sure that was a cover for the fact that as soon as the little lumps grew something to move with they were off like shots, and they couldn’t do that if they weren’t touching the ground.

He was also pretty sure he’d gotten some kind of abridged version because it certainly didn’t cover, questions like:  “Is it normal for a rhombus to roll away?”, “can you just tuck them under your arm like a purse dog?”, “is the high-pitched beeping normal?”, “is it okay to holler around sparklings?”, and “is the yelling and beeping related?”

He really hoped the yelling was okay, because he’d been trying to reach Optimus, or really anyone on normal-Cybertron since yesterday and he was getting frustrated.  In fact he was in the middle of another very level-headed and justified message (just, uh, louder than those usually are) to Optimus with a couple armfuls of stubby protoforms-bordering-sparklings.

Then they suddenly decided that docility was for (metaphorical) squares and started, all at once, to kick up a fuss.  This meant Rodimus did the terrible algebra and, swearing loudly, dropped the phone to wrangle the kids. The protoforms, meanwhile, were admirably impersonating a car alarm factory during an earthquake (nightcore remix).  

By the time Rodimus had sat down, at least tried to calm down the protoforms, and started leaving a new message after seeing his phone had disconnected, he had been swarmed by a half-dozen free-roaming sparklings that had been drawn by the movement.  He was also being yelled at by Ratchet, which made him pretty sure that being loud _wasn’t_ bad for sparklings, which was a load off him.  Figuratively. What felt like several sparklings had gotten ahold of his spoiler and were trying to pull him over backwards.  The fact they were cheerfully repeating “shit!” like run-down toy speakers didn’t help.

Then he registered Ratchet was asking who he was yelling at, and responded that it was Optimus’ inbox.

Over the rest of the conversation, Ratchet managed to wade through the swarm and take the phone from Rodimus and threw in his brand of you’re-in-trouble-now not-yelling.  Rodimus was slowly being dragged to the ground and piled on top of by the sparklings. He was pretty sure he could fight his way free if he put in the effort, point-one percenters or now, but he wasn’t going to fight children, so this was his life now, he guessed.

Finally Ratchet finished up and Rodimus took the chance to shake an arm loose and hold it out, “hey can you help me up?”

Rodimus was handed his phone.  Ratchet took a step back and said, “that’s about thirty of them that aren’t underfoot or trying to push down the fence, you can keep them busy for a while.”

“Really?!”

Ratchet checked his pager and turned, “yes.  Be careful they don’t yank on your arm too hard, fresh welds tear easy.”

* * *

 

If you’d asked Whirl whether it would take longer to fix someone face-planting on their own damn neck or getting shredded from the waist down, he’d have guessed the getting blown-the-pit-up one to be sure.  Meaning that cosmically, _someone_ out there somewhere owed him five shanix, because Minimus was sitting across the medbay, turning the Magnus armor’s head over in his hands, by the time he had dragged himself back to consciousness.

And pretty quickly after that he was pulled off the medical berth by First Aid and shoved through the basic mobility tests he could perform in his sleep by this point.  And got briefed that apparently most of his legs had been entirely replaced, any surface damage likely to limit his mobility had been taken care of (though they didn’t have the time to take care of cosmetic damage), and most of his internals had been stuck back into place, knocked back into shape, or replaced wholesale, blah blah etcetera.  This included his gyroscope, which was taking its time to integrate and accounted for the awkward rocking of the entire room. And why his feet kept crossing each other when First Aid herded him and Mims out of the medbay.

He finally tuned in to what First Aid was jabbering on about and cocked his head, “wait, did you just say there’s a hot spot?”

First Aid distractedly replied, “yes, and there’s a correlation of instability of sparks and early cooling in silica-poor substrates that typically wouldn’t support any newsparks, so now that we’re following a pattern instead of being forced to hold resources to prepare for a rush in an area once it’s started to degrade, we need more hands on deck to provide consistent care for the developing sparklings since the harvesters don’t have lull periods now.  So you two are going with the other stragglers since the ship’s landed.”

Whirl nodded and allowed himself to be pushed along, this sounded like fun.  Most of that was completely uninteresting but he definitely caught what he was supposed to be doing.  And hell yeah.

Minimus was weirdly quiet though.  Whirl would have thought he would have had something to say about it, on account of that definitely being some form of organization.

Whatever, they got pointed in the right direction and First Aid bolted off in the opposite.  

After a few minutes of walk-stumble-hopping Whirl finally broke the awkward lack of talking (because whistling doesn’t count as conversation if no one’s complaining about it).  “So you didn’t die when you fell on your head.”

“No.”

“Good for you, no one would have been able to keep a straight face at your funeral if you went and kicked it in a glorified household accident, Mimsy.”  Whirl snickered as he tiptoed around the scattered sparks. Not particularly at the idea of Minimus dying, had a soft spot for old Stick-Up-The-Ass, though he’d kill anyone for saying it.  But the the mental image of Minimus climbing out of his own coffin to straighten some flowers before climbing back in was _very_ good.

“You survived as well.”

Whirl laughed again, stepped in an empty pit, fell over, and scrambled back to his feet.  He said, “I mean, I ain’t setting a high bar for chat, but that’s the best you’ve got? Not even gonna throw a ‘Prime’ in there for shits and giggles?”  

Minimus didn’t say anything.

“Hey if we’re talking about me though, can I just say this whole surviving thing is kinda bullshit?  I mean, if I ever die now it’s just gonna be, ‘oh he survived getting his ass blown up and then whipped open the damn matrix to cook a pile of functionists, but he couldn’t take a bad knock in a bar fight?’.  I’m never gonna top that!” Whirl gestured in mostly-mock frustration

Minimus still kept silent.  Whirl rolled his eye and scoffed, going back to whistling.

Several hours later Whirl was having a damn fun time, he was frustrated as all get out, tired, and sore, but he was glad to save that for the next fragger to look at him funny.  When he wouldn’t accidentally punt one of these little guys, of course.

All that said, he still had the presence of mind to be _very_ confused when he looked over to see a sparkling mash a handful of dust onto Minimus’s leg, only for him to have no reaction to it.  This warranted investigation.

He crouched down and tapped the side of Minimus’s head and asked, “hey, what’s wrong with you?  They miss some processor damage or something?”

Minimus stood unresponsive with a haunted look for a long second before he finally replied, “‘ _the duly appointed enforcer of the tyrest accord can duly appoint my shiny metal a-word?_ ’”

And he didn’t get any further because Whirl clapped his claws together and screamed, “YOU FOUND IT!  FINALLY!” He then spun to the distressed noises that had kicked up in response and,patting the sparklings’ heads to try and calm them, started explaining, “no, no, this is great, don’t cry, listen here, you won’t believe this…”

* * *

 

Misfire stuck his arms straight out to the sides.

The sparklings stuck their arms straight out to the sides.

He balanced on one foot.

The sparklings copied the action.  Most of them fell over. And most of the ones that managed to balance noticed the others fall and flopped to the ground too.

Misfire guffawed.

The few still paying attention to him laughed in staticky mimicry.  The ones that had forgotten him copied their laughing neighbors with increasing distortion.

Misfire cringed back, the funny quickly becoming a bit creepy.  

He then jumped when the doors to the lobby he was standing in banged open.  Then gathered himself up to look as responsible as he could hope to when he saw it was Swerve and Krok dragging a big mechanical something through the room.  

Krok looked behind him to check for anyone under foot while tugging on the whatsit, instead catching sight of Misfire and asking, “what’re you still here for?”

Misfire shifted his feet and said, “well I was keeping an eye on the kids, you know?  Didn’t seem right that no one was in here with them. Also they fell over on their own.”

Swerve leaned out from behind the whosit and said, “they left?”

“Sure wasn’t anyone down here when I showed up.”  Misfire shrugged. Several dozen sparklings shrugged.

Krok noticed a couple preoccupied kids hauling on something behind the desk, and as they made progress he realized what they were pulling across the floor face-down.  “Were they Deathsaurus’?”

Swerve had put his forehead against the machine and didn’t bother to look up, not that he could have seen the unconscious mech, considering that a good deal of the sparklings bonking against the machine were bigger than him at this point.  He said, “One of them was, had one of those Enforcers here too.”

“Well I think one of them powered down.”  Krok shooed away the sparklings, which made “move along” hands right back at him but scattered to find something new to mess with.  When gently slapping the mech’s face a few times got no response he looked up, “you mind taking a look? He’s out cold.”

The crowd parted and Swerve broke through holding his repaired arm close enough that they couldn’t wrench it trying to play.  When he finally reached the mech he did the basic check as well as he could remember it and said, “pretty sure he just got run down,” he rubbed his visor and asked, “there’s a berth in the staff room, can you help me haul him?”

With a grunt and nod Krok pulled the Decepticon over his shoulder and walked through to toss him on the makeshift recharge station.  He turned to Swerve, who was pulling a kid off the vending machine in the corner, and cut off the minibot’s ongoing statements that he didn’t have to do it all by himself and asked, “so how fragged are we without them helping?”

Swerve grimaced and raised his hands, “like, we aren’t that much worse off than before, just stretched thinner, and I’m making it worse than I have an excuse to because I haven’t actually practiced in a while, not that I’ve ever worked a hot spot before.  But yeah, it’s probably gonna suck pretty bad when they show up with those newsparks for the new incubator in a few hours.”

Krok dragged his hand down his face and herded the kids back into the main area as they left the back room.  After a moment of thought he asked, “there’s younger ones upstairs, right?”

“Yep, there’s a few folks up there that I’m really hoping haven’t wandered off too.”

“Hey Misfire, we’re close to Rodion, right?”  Krok turned to where Misfire was messing with the sparklings again.

“Oh yeah, sure, it’s only like two miles out!”  Misfire pointed to a wall. Several sparklings smacked each other as they swung their arms up.

“Be right back,” Krok walked into the elevator and hit the up button.

They stood in the lobby for a second until Misfire said, “soooo I don’t have to go back to digging them up, right?  That’s really boring.”

“No, we need someone to watch them here and as soon as Krok gets back we need to finish setting this thing up.”

“Nice!  I was teaching them to swear earlier.  I have a video,” Misfire felt a shadow fall over him and turned to see a soon-to-be heavyweight hovering behind him curiously.  He took a step back and said, “whoah buddy, personal space. Is it just me or are these things a little creepy?”

Swerve waved a hand in front of one that returned the gesture in rough mimicry, “I mean, they’re kinda that awkward stage, right?  They’re close to being finished but they aren’t quite right, like faces and proportions and stuff. It’s called the uncanny valley or something…  I dunno, they went over it in medical school but I’m kinda…”

With a nod Misfire pulled a couple pills out and offered them, “you want some uppers?  These ones aren’t too strong.”

When Swerve shook his head Misfire shrugged and popped them.  

At that moment Krok came back out of the elevator with a crate full of younger sparklings tucked under his arm.  He nodded his head at Misfire and said, “alright, I need you to fly me out to the edge of the city. Think I could just toss this in your cockpit?”

Misfire shrugged and started towards the door, Swerve steps in front of them with his arms spread, “whoah now you can’t just take off with a bunch of kids!”

“Don’t worry I’ll bring them right back, I just have an idea to solve some problems and I need them for it,” Krok adjusted the rattling box.

Swerve bit his tongue and looked around, “look be really quick, and you’re taking eight?  You need to be really careful with them and bring eight back.”

Krok tapped his chest with his free hand, “swear.  This is how I trick the other Scavengers into doing chores.”

“You trick us into doing work?”

“Yes, now let’s get a move on, Misfire.”  Krok ushered him out the door and left Swerve grimacing in the half-dismantled lobby.

A couple minutes later they landed on the outskirts of Rodion, which was consumed with the general disorganized party that seemed to happen any time enough Cybertronians hit the streets without clear direction or reason to riot.  Krok took the last sparkling out of the box and chucked it in a dumpster, meanwhile Misfire stared at the sea of generally celebratory robots and complained, “no wonder no one’s volunteering, look at all this!”

Krok grunted and said, “bet it’ll still be going when everything’s taken care of.  Can you circle for a couple minutes until I find a couple people? Then just head on back to the law office.”

Misfire took off and Krok turned, now alone, to the crowd.  He picked out a handful of likely mechs within shouting range and yelled, “hey!  Can you come help me for just a second?”

The three slightly inebriated mechs wandered over and one said, “what’s up?  What are those doing?”

Krok herded a couple runaways back to the main group and replied, “well we were moving these to a building just a couple miles that way but they left me here without anything to move them with.  I can carry a couple by hand but I can’t leave the rest here alone. Could you just help me take them there, please?”

The group glanced amongst themselves and the speaker replied, “...I guess.”

Back at the law office Swerve and Misfire finished pushing the incubator against the wall.  They leaned back for a second to rest and Misfire asked, “so, uh, are they supposed to be doing that?”  

Swerve looked at the room expecting the worst… and saw a herd all holding their hands in “ok” signs beneath their waists.  He cracked up and Misfire lost his composure right along with him.

They were interrupted by the loud thumping on the main doors.  Misfire wove through the now dabbing crowd and threw the doors open, letting Krok lead the four natives through, who were all holding a sparkling or two with an expression of sheer stress on their faces.

He brushed on through and directed them, “okay we just need to drop these upstairs, it’ll just take a minute.”

A couple minutes more of keeping the kids from fighting or doing anything else stupid Krok brought them back downstairs, “since you’re already here, would you do us a favor?  Swerve here could use some help for a bit, it’s nothing complex but we really need the extra eyes.”

Krok leaned in and quietly said, “just keep giving them small jobs and they’ll stick around.”

Misfire turned to Swerve and whispered, “oh my god he _does_ do it on purpose!  We thought he was just really bad at cleaning!”

* * *

 

Apparently playing on the fences was pretty fun.  And when so many sparklings were point-one percenters it was more accurate to call them eighty-niners, that meant the fences took a beating.  So Tailgate dug his feet in and shoved the half-ripped out post upright, fighting the weight of the multiple curious kids leaning on the other side to watch.  And he barely flinched at all when Whirl hammered it back down.

Tailgate stepped back and gave his hands a shake to try and loosen them up, “so you _are_ okay, right?  You don’t look great.”

“Uh, this is how I always look, bastard.”  Whirl twirled his mallet and bobbed off down the fence.

With a start Tailgate trotted after him and defensively said, “hey I didn’t mean like that! You’re all banged up!  And you looked _really_ bad when they found you and Magnus, I was worried someone else was going to… you know.”

Whirl grunted and turned to the next post close to tilting over.  He whistled and gestured for Tailgate to do his part, then said, “yeah don’t go working yourself up, buttercup, it’s pretty clear at this point _something_ unholy out there is invested in keeping me kicking.  And I’ve gotta put in the effort too, now that I’ve got a kid-slash-pet to take care of and a primacy to disgrace.”

Tailgate turned away from the cackling helicopter and leaned on the pole, “I don’t know how you’re so cheerful with all this.  Ratchet said we all get one free panic attack before he starts judging us and he’s judged me pretty hard like twice now. Just about told him to eat one the last time.”

“Eat what, a kid?”

“What?  No! I told him to eat a,” Tailgate dropped his voice, “ _ass_ or something, I dunno, I wanted to be rude.  You still haven’t explained why you’re so bouncy when everyone else is dying, though.”

“Hey, I’m having a great time!  My greatest up-yours to Maggy that’s been backflipping for three and a half years just stuck the landing, my ship’s canon (so I’ll be claiming the betting pool on it), and I get to play with these cute little fraggers!”  Whirl reached over the fence and very gingerly tapped a sparkling’s head with the mallet. The sparkling grabbed on and as the mallet was lifted away several others grabbed the first, all trailing together like crabs in a pot.  Whirl shook them loose and laughed again, “I mean look at how little they are! And they’ve got those cute little weird faces and crap.”

Huffing, Tailgate cut in with, “please hammer the post!”

Whirl muttered and rolled his eye, raising the mallet and while driving the pole back into the ground, said, “hey, not my fault if I’m the only one that _doesn’t_ have a broken whatever it is that makes you think your species’ young is cute.”  

There was a hesitant cough behind him, and Whirl spun and deadpanned, “even if they grow into weird nudists.”

The unpainted newframe wrinkled their brow in confusion and asked, “what do I do now?”

Pointing, Tailgate said, “there’s a painting station right over that hill.  After that you just find someone to show you how to help out.”

“But there’s a line!”

Tailgate tilted his head and replied, “well… yeah?  There’s a lot of you that need painting! But you get sick and hurt easy without it so you have to.”

The newframe made a high-pitched noise, stomped their foot, and wandered off in the general direction of the painting station.  

“Remind me not to get stuck working with that one,” Whirl would be crinkling his nose in disgust if he had one, “brat.”

Tailgate said, “They weren’t _that_ bad, they probably just need a couple days to figure out how things work.  But, uh, what did you do to Magnus exactly? You said something before.”

With a clap of his claws Whirl bounced in place, “I graffitied the inside of his head!  Way back with the nanocons-” He focused on something in the middle of the care center and cut himself off mid sentence, “what the hell’s going on out there?”

Tailgate followed Whirl’s line of sight and saw that Cyclonus had just landed, and that in the maybe half-minute since then, several sparklings had broken away from the general milling crowd to follow him.  He chuckled and said, “yeah that happens every time he touches down. It’s a mimicry thing, only instead of copying someone, if they realize they’re kinda like someone they start tailing them. And those ones have talons, that’s why they have gloves on.”

Whirl squinted and realized that the swarming sparklings did indeed have gloves taped on their hands.  Then one nearly shoved Cyclonus over and he snickered, “you sure? I think they’re just jealous that he doesn’t have to wear them.”

“I mean, I don’t think so-”

“Someone should tape gloves on him.”

“I really don’t think that would help, and...” Tailgate put his face in his hand, “you’re just trying to mess with him aren’t you?  I’m too tired.”

Whirl chuckled and replied, “ **> :3c**”

Tailgate jumped, “ _how did you say that out loud?_ ”

* * *

 

Rewind exhaled slowly and tried to chip the pilled paint off his hands while he waited for the newframe to finish choosing.  He leaned and looked behind the newframe to the disorganized line of grey robots. One of his optics twitched, mentally comparing how many were waiting to the five of them set up with spray wands.  Finally he snapped his fingers and caught their attention, saying, “look, picking your first colors is exciting but you don’t have to get it right on the first try, you can experiment later but a lot of other people need to get taken care of today.”

The newframe wrapped their arms around their legs and huffed, “yeah but I don’t know what’s even kind of right!  I like all the colors!” They looked around and asked, “how did you choose?”

He rubbed the side of his head while his headache built, he really thought that the first properly functionism-free generation would be a more interesting interview.  But they just kept asking him questions instead. He supposed he should have expected that from a group with no knowledge base outside of the basic data slug _he_ had edited together in the first place.  Rewind really wished that he had stayed in the care areas, talking with the natives was useful at least.  There had been a lot about this Cybertron his records were incomplete on, not to mention they cut off some time ago, presumably just after a datastick recall.  

That wasn’t even getting started on the difference in reaction between their Cybertron’s senate being assassinated and the council being killed.  When they finally finished taking care of this hot spot he wanted to ask Chromedome about tag-teaming a short documentary on it, having a psychological perspective would be a good addition, not to mention he really wanted to just enjoy some downtime after all this.

He cued in to the question he had actually been asked and, hoping to light a fire under them, asked, “look, do you have a name yet?”

“Yeah, Press!”  Said Press.

“Alright then, Press, the thing is that I didn’t pick my first colors.”

Press cocked their head and said, “why didn’t you?”

Rewind leaned over to the tinter connected to his spray wand and keyed in an eyeburningly bright green, “because I took too long.”

To his surprise, Press crossed him arms and said, “you’re lying, you just want me to leave faster.”

“Fine,” said Rewind, “but it really doesn’t matter that much.  My first paintjob was ugly. Just meant I repainted when I had the chance.  When there wasn’t a line.”

Press started looking through the swatches again, asking offhandedly, “then why’d you choose those colors in the first place?”

“I told you I didn’t.”

They tapped a pale pink and said, “you just said you were lying… but this can go on my arms I guess.”

Rewind retorted, “it wasn’t because I was too slow.  Back when I was created they only let very specific mechs choose their own pallet, most of us got what we got and repainted when we had the chance if we were unhappy.”

Confused, Press asked, “ _why?_ ”

“Functionism.  There should have been a brief overview of what it was in the dataslug you got, considering I edited it,”  Rewind gestured for them to raise their arms.

“Haven’t read the whole thing yet.”

Rewind rolled his eyes behind his visor, “well you should.  It’s got most of the important stuff to know. And you’ll want a heads up on functionism when you’re dealing with the people living here, they’re neck deep in the stuff and aren’t exactly snapping out of it cleanly.”

“Why?”

“Because of psychology, now give me your other arm,” said Rewind.

Press stuck out their arm, “and that didn’t explain anything.”

“...I’ll explain it if you learn how to use this and take over so I can leave.”

* * *

 

Three and a half weeks, start to finish.

Three and a half weeks from the first spark officially harvested to the last mature cybertronian receiving their top coat.  “Rung’s Memorium” was officially a “historic site of” rather than an active work zone.

Nickel craved death.  Not her own, of course, but she was really beginning to understand the type that defaulted to violence when stressed.  She could really go for a throttle. Didn’t really care who wound up going for a throttling.

Or a strong drink.  That would be good too.

“I’ll miss the ones that couldn’t come with us,” Deathsaurus sighed, breaking Nickel out of her daydream.

She shook her head, “we’re at capacity, bring a mech over two thousand and we’re not sustainable.”

He turned to the side, eyeing the minibot on his shoulder, and said, “I wasn’t trying to talk more on, just saying I’ll miss them.  Won’t you?”

“Nope.”  She scoffed, “I’ve worked a couple hot spots before, it’s a scrap-ton of work and I’ve never been good at ‘warm fuzzies’ as far as rewards go.”

Deathsaurus creased his brows and turned back to look down the steps.  The last stragglers were saying goodbye to to their friends that either hadn’t asked quickly enough to find a spot on his warworld or had declined joining.  He even spied a few of the glaring Autobots that had been there when he received Nickel’s signal, among them were the ones he had… well, allowed his own crew to die to.  Neither side was willing to start a fight in the circumstances, and he was willing to let them go when it had been _his_ lapse of judgement that killed his crew.  He finally replied, “it’s good that we don’t depend on your ‘warm fuzzies’, then.  Permission to lift off?.”

Nickel caught sight of a certain mech over the crowd and ordered, “denied.  Get everything powered on and ready though. And signal ahead to the world to be ready to leave as soon as we reach a bay.  I need to take care of something before we leave.”

“This won’t-”

She slid off his shoulder and started pulling medical equipment out of her subspace, “they have their hands full here, two functional long range ships that aren’t combat class, and it should take a few minutes to figure out exactly what happened.”  

Sticking an end of the packaging in her teeth, Nickel ripped open a fresh needle for her injector.  She slotted it in then added a canister of neurocircuit toxin to the other end. Then jammed a few more on the end, sharp points puncturing through the concave backs, secured them with tape, and, after a moment of thought, added a lethal dose of quick-acting sedative in the same fashion.

She darted into the sea of milling cybertronians.

Deathsaurus watched Megatron in the distance.  He was absolutely unsurprised when he keeled over.

And, hand on the door close, he stepped to the side to allow Nickel’s alt to ramp into the ship.  She transformed back, disassembling and cleaning her injector, said, “let’s go.”

Deathsaurus cued the pilot and turned back, “you’re certain this won’t draw trouble?”

She shrugged, “he’s practically slated for execution and I doubt they’ll abandon that cluster-frag of a planet on a suspicion.”

“Just a suspicion?”

Nickel dropped the used medical supplies into the garbage and, with a flourish, reholstered her injector, “there were only newframes directly around him that thought he collapsed randomly, and I covered my badge, so they thought I was a one of them.   _And_ I got him in a joint, so they won’t even know he was stuck with something until they carry out an autopsy.”

Deathsaurus hummed and nodded in tentative agreement.

Flopping into the second to last open seat, Nickel booted up a datapad and looked it over, judging whether it would be better to hit a planet that would have parts to perform some needed upkeep on the warp core, or some good-old indiscriminate plundering to raise the funds to upgrade the fuel refinement system.  She scrolled down several priorities and, right below “reliable source of snacks?” checked off “revenge against Megatron”.


End file.
